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Category: It Was Awesome

Every night at bedtime we say prayers with the girls. Quinn gets all into it, excited to shout “Amen!” like no one I’ve ever heard in any of the buttoned-down churches I’ve ever attended. Saoirse rolls her eyes the entire time she’s making the sign of the cross (kind of like her non-Catholic father! Hey-oh! No, just kidding. Sometimes I think he’s the best Catholic in the house), but goes through the motions because dammit we are raising her right and she WILL do this. No? That’s not how you ingrain a sense of faith? Well. We rolled in from the beach at 11:15 Friday night, a day early, because we are crazy fools and wanted to be home to catch Notre Dame’s season opener at 9-are-you-kidding-me-o’clock in the morning. Oh, and apparently because pregnant ladies can actually hallucinate when they’re sleep-deprived and I wanted to see what that was like (not kidding. More on that at some point). We’d eaten dinner in Rehobeth at the most fantastic oyster house…

The dappled sunlight was growing brighter through the thin white cotton curtains, dancing on the powder blue walls of the room. David had already gotten up, leaving me to wake on my own in the silence of the early morning. Both girls appeared beside me, asking to climb into bed. Saoirse: “Can you you help me?” Quinn: “I want down. HELP.” I was on my side, eyes still half-closed, as the girls played beside me on the mattress with the new cars they’d gotten as souvenirs. Saoirse was sprawled against my legs. Quinn sat at my head, her little toes resting against my arms, driving her train in and out of the tunnel she’d made under the sheet. The room was quiet save for the girls’s questions about their cars and the sounds of the wheels rolling over the bedspread. It was 6:45 in the morning, on the fifth day of our vacation. We had nowhere to go in a hurry. Orange juice was waiting for them in the fridge. The sun grew brighter against the sky blue of the walls, and I closed my eyes again, listening…

You guys. There’s a baby in my belly. I know. I needed a moment, too. But it’s true, and my jeans will vouch for me, because they don’t button anymore. It’s there, somewhere under my belly button, swimming around, all teeny-tiny fingers and toes, making me insanely tired, improbably nauseous, and forcing me to wear pants with elastic panels that come up to my chest. All I need are suspenders and a Pabst Blue Ribbon in one hand and I look like an elderly farmer with a potbelly sitting on his front porch, watching the world roll by. Except that my front porch would be littered with kids’ toys and two (three!) young children climbing the railing. But here we are: three months, countless packs of saltines and lots of naps later, I have finally, finally crawled out from under the rock that is the first trimester to shout it from the rooftops: Operation Procreation has launched its third mission, expected to be completed around the first week of January. And boy, do I need to catch up on the laundry. We wanted another child, but no rush, no worries…